There was the day when Deputy Dan Corwin left the San Clemente police station to get a haircut. He drove onto a side street to avoid a construction zone and noticed “a frequent customer of San Clemente Police Services” along the street.

The deputy decided to strike up a conversation.

The chat – some of Corwin’s colleagues call him “Columbo” because of the folksy, clueless manner that he is known to exude in the style of a TV cop named Columbo – led to recovery of a cache of stolen property and a felony arrest.

Another time, deputies in Dana Point arrested a woman in possession of credit cards that had been stolen in San Clemente. The suspect’s car was towed, loaded with bags from Nordstrom and Macy’s. Corwin, following up on the credit card case, went to the tow yard, noticed the bags, wrote a search warrant and presented his inventory of the clothing to store security. A security video showed the suspect making repeated purchases, accompanied by a man Corwin recognized from earlier sheriff’s dealings in San Clemente. A further look at store security videos revealed him stealing clothing. Arrests resulted.

Those are among stories that San Clemente’s chief of police services, Lt. John Coppock, told Thursday at a luncheon where the San Clemente Exchange Club and San Clemente Chamber of Commerce saluted Corwin as San Clemente’s Deputy of the Year.

Corwin has worked for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department since 2001, following nine years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He transferred to San Clemente four years ago and called it “the greatest place I have ever worked.”

He lives in San Clemente with his wife Chandee. They have four daughters.

“My favorite part of police work is probably making a positive impression on the citizens, people who don’t usually have a lot of police contact,” Corwin said. “When they do, I want that contact to be positive. A lot of times people perceive us as being negative, and I’m trying to change that. Only maybe 5 percent of the people are bad people who do criminal activity. Most of the people are law-abiding citizens.”

OCFA HONOREE

Tom Arzate works for the Orange County Fire Authority out of Station 50, along Camino de los Mares near Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in San Clemente. It’s the right spot for him. As an emergency transport technician, he handles accidents and calls for medical aids from the north end of San Clemente as far south as I-5 at Las Pulgas.

Fred Swegles grew up in small-town San Clemente before the freeway. He has covered the town since 1970. Today he covers San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. He was in the second graduating class at San Clemente High School, after having spent the first two years of high school in double sessions at historic Capistrano Union High School in San Juan. When the new high school opened, he became first sports editor of the school paper, The Triton. He studied journalism and Spanish at USC on scholarship, graduating with honors. Was sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Surfed on the USC surf team. (High school surfing didn't exist back then.) With the Sun Post, he began covering competitive surfing from the mid-1970s, with the birth of the the modern world tour and the origins of high school surf teams. He got into surf photography and into world travel. Has surfed on six continents (not Antarctica). Has visited 11 San Clementes. Has written photo-illustrated profiles on most of them, with more in the works.